State publisher McClatchy faces delisting

The New York Stock Exchange has notified struggling newspaper publisher McClatchy Co., parent company of The State and six other papers in the Carolinas, that the company faces delisting.

According to a company filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, McClatchy falls below NYSE listing criteria. As of April 8, its total market capitalization was less than the minimum of $75 million over 30 consecutive trading days. McClatchy’s most recently reported stockholders’ equity reported with the SEC was $52.4 million, falling short of the $75 million required, The Charlotte Business Journal reported Monday.

In addition to The State, McClatchy publishes The Charlotte Observer, The Raleigh News & Observer, The Myrtle Beach Sun News, The Rock Hill Herald, The Hilton Head Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette.

McClatchy has roughly five weeks to submit a plan to the NYSE demonstrating how it intends to comply with the NYSE’s standards within 18 months, The Business Journal reported.

McClatchy’s stock, which has traded between 35 cents and $10.70 over the last year, closed at 59 cents a share Friday. The NYSE notified the company in February that it had fallen below the listing standard for the average price per share of less than $1 over 30 consecutive trading days, The Business Journal reported.

Last month, California-based McClatchy announced it would cut 1,600 jobs and lower salaries across the company. Among those since let go or who have left because their hours were cut are several key members of The State’s news side, including Editorial Page Editor Brad Warthen and Pulitzer Prize-nominated editorial cartoonist Robert Ariail.

Collexis dilutes stock to raise money

Collexis Holdings Inc., the Columbia, SC-based technology company that is struggling to stay afloat, said Monday it raised an additional $905,000 during the first three weeks of April.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that the company had to sell nearly 13 million shares of stock to get the money, according to information filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

That works out to just 7 cents a share for Collexis stock. Collexis had opened trading Monday at 14 cents a share.

Collexis appears to be in dire straits financially. It lost more than $4 million for the last six months of 2008 and the company’s independent accounting firm included an explanatory paragraph in Collexis’s annual report last October that expressed substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.

According to Monday’s SEC filing, Collexis “accepted a subscription for 5,714,286 shares of common stock at a price per share of $0.07, representing an aggregate investment of $400,000” on April 1.

It also “accepted a subscription for an additional 5,714,286 shares of our common stock at a price per share of $0.07, representing an aggregate investment of $400,000,” on April 14 and “accepted a subscription for an additional 1,500,000 shares of our common stock at a price per share of $0.07, representing an aggregate investment of $105,000” on April 16.

That’s a total of 12,928,572 shares of stock sold to raise barely $900,000. That represents some major share dilution and should make existing shareholders anything but happy.

The filing added that the company will use the proceeds to make installment payments required under the terms of Collexis’s recent acquisition agreements and for working capital.

Presenting basket weaving as SC history

Earmine and John Smalls are Mt. Pleasant residents who recently visited Monarch Elementary School in Union County to tell students about the history of basket weaving and teach them how to weave sweetgrass baskets.

The Smalls visit several schools a year and present the hands-on program. Third-grade teacher Rhonda Hollingsworth told The Union Daily Times that the program was part of the students’ study of South Carolina history.

Coiled basketry, one of the oldest African crafts in America, appeared in South Carolina during the late 17th century. The first known baskets in the Lowcountry were fanner baskets used for winnowing rice, according to The Union Daily Times.

While sweetgrass basket weaving is an important part of black culture in South Carolina, it’s also an important aspect of the state’s culture as a whole, and it’s nice to see it portrayed in the larger scope, rather than simply being presented in a racial context.

On old-time pirates and leadership

George Mason University economics professor Peter Leeson writes here for National Public Radio an interesting defense of old-time pirates, the ones today who are regarded as little more than bloody-thirsty cutthroats who reveled in swilling rum and wreaking havoc on commerce.

“At a time when the legitimate world’s favored system of government was unconstrained monarchy, early 18th-century pirates were practicing constitutional democracy. Before setting sail each would-be pirate crew drew up and agreed to a set of written rules that governed them. These rules regulated gambling, smoking, drinking, the adjudication of conflicts, and in some cases even prohibited harassing members of the fairer sex.

“18th-century pirate constitutions established democratic governance for their roguish commonwealths. Crewmembers elected their captains by popular vote and democratically removed captains who dared to misuse their power. Because of this surprising system, far from tyrannical, the average 18th-century pirate captain was a dutiful, elected executor of his constituents’ will.”

These pirates of yore understood, Leeson writes, that the most important check on leaders’ use of power is society’s ability to select them.

That still doesn’t mean that it would have been a whole lot of fun to bump up against the likes of Blackbeard or Black Bart on the open sea, but it does add some interesting historical perspective.